THEATRE-ARGENTINA: New Trend to Cast Slumdwellers as Slumdwellers

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jan 31 2003 (IPS) - A growing trend among film and television producers in Argentina to seek a more ”authentic” look for those cast in the roles of slumdwellers and homeless people has given a strong boost to a community theatre workshop in a Buenos Aires shantytown.

”It has become fashionable to seek out actors who don’t just present a stereotype of the poor and marginalised, who don’t overact, but who merely show themselves as they normally are. That has benefited us enormously,” Julio Arrieta, director of the Vocational Theatre Group of Villa 21, in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Barracas, told IPS.

Arrieta’s home, which doubles as a theatre studio, is located in the crowded Barracas ”villa miseria” or slum, which is home to around 35,000 of the 12 million people living in the greater Buenos Aires.

”I have a wife and 12 kids, and we scrape by on my salary as an administrative employee in a public school,” said Arrieta. ”But my real love is art. Every free moment I have is spent writing a script, thinking about how to stage a particular scene, or doing a ‘casting call’ for a film or TV programme.”

The studio does not function as a theatre school but as a workshop that creates plays that are put on in the streets and other places in the neighbourhood.

But among the amateur actors there are some who show real talent, and who have won leading and supporting roles in films and TV shows.

A new generation of young filmmakers has emerged in Argentina, graduates of filmmaking schools who work with unknown actors or people who are representative of a particular place or social group, and have never acted before.

One of the creative forces behind the new trend was director Carlos Sorín, who produced a TV ad for a telecommunications firm that installed phone booths in villages located in provinces over 1,000 kms from Buenos Aires.

The ad showed the excited faces of local residents as they called family members in the capital from the most remote parts of the country.

The new fashion spread to the world of filmmaking, where young slumdwellers began to be played by slumdwellers instead of actors, and labourers by labourers, without any training to speak of.

For instance, a lathe operator was cast in the leading role in the 1999 film ‘Mundo Grúa’ (Crane World), by Pablo Trapero.

Since then, it has become common to see complete unknowns on the big screen. Far from turning off spectators, the new tendency has drawn them in, especially since Argentine productions have begun to enjoy success in international film festivals.

The phenomenon gave new meaning to Arrieta’s work in Barracas. ”The production teams of TV shows or films call me up, and suggest that I announce a casting-call to find someone – a young guy, a woman or an older person – and I hold the call at my house,” he said.

Many of those who show up are newcomers to Arrieta’s workshop, drawn by the chance of making some money. ”For us it’s really difficult to make ‘art’ because there are many people here without jobs, which means that if they need us,” they have to pay, because we need the money, said the workshop director.

Arrieta has placed actors in starring or secondary roles in the films ‘Las Tumbas’ (The Tombs), ‘Hijo del Río’ (Son of the River), ‘Después de la tormenta’ (After the Storm), ‘Gatica’ and others.

But not all of the new actors are able to keep a career in acting alive, despite their initial success.

For his participation in ‘Las Tumbas’, by director Javier Torre, Eduardo Salcedo won the Cóndor de Plata prize, in the ”revelation” category. However, he has not returned to acting.

But Erasmo Olivera, another resident of the Barracas slum, won prizes for his role in ‘Gatica’, directed by Leonardo Favio, and has gone on to appear in other movies and on TV.

Those who show up at Arrieta’s workshop are also invited to take part in movies shot by filmmaking students, or in music videos. ”We appear in the last three music videos of the Los Fabulosos Cadillacs,” an internationally known Argentine rock group, Arrieta said proudly.

Keen on cashing in on the new fad, TV producers have created programmes that narrate the stories of homeless people who occupy empty housing as squatters (‘Okupas’), or people who are in prison (‘Tumberos’) – turning, once again, to Arrieta’s workshop.

On TV, however, the amateur actors have only appeared in minor roles. ”They don’t have confidence in us, and they want us just to appear as extras,” said Arrieta. ”But that doesn’t matter. We know they’re scared of us, and right now that’s just how things are, it’s a relationship of trust that has to grow.

”They call us because we have ‘the right faces’. But we want to fill the acting roles that represent us. Why do they have to cast Gastón Pauls (a famous Argentine actor) to act the part of a poor person, if we, who are poor, are available?” he asked.

”It is important to us to show how we live, what our codes are, and, hopefully, to show that there are not only drugs, crime and prostitution in the ‘villas’, but ordinary folk as well, who work, live, suffer and are happy, with the vicissitudes of life,” Arrieta concluded.